WHAT IS an E-TUTORIAL? an Innovation for the 21St Century
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WHAT IS AN E-TUTORIAL? An Innovation for the 21st Century John H. Morgan, Senior Fellow Ph.D.(Hartford), D.Sc.(London), Psy.D.(FH/Oxford) Foundation House, Oxford Sir Julian Huxley Distinguished Research Professor Cloverdale College Karl Mannheim Professor of the History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences Graduate Theological Foundation ABSTRACT This paper explore a new innovation in the traditional tutorial model of an Oxford education. The tutor and the tutorial have been a central part of the English tradition of higher education at Oxford and Cambridge Universities for nearly half a millennium. That tradition, though presently under siege from a British government obsessed with parsimonious legislation, has served the British people and the global academy with distinction. However, with the onslaught of educational technology, the increasing demand for a restructuring of the traditional model of tutor/tutorial matrix is daily being called for and, in this paper, there has been a carefully constructed response to that call. This paper explores the use of the internet as an enhancement of the traditional tutorial and draws from a five-year employment of what is now being called the E-Tutorial. The words “tutor” and “tutorial” have been around a long time. In fact, they seem to be an indispensable part of contemporary conversations about educational philosophy and pedagogy and fit nicely in all discussions of competency-based learning in the modern world of education (Ryan, 2007). Of course, any historian of education will know that the terms are linked at the root to the great educational institutions of England, namely, Oxford and Cambridge. In fact, the first usage of both words is found in the early documents of these universities and have for several hundred years constituted the core and framework of their educational endeavors (Mayr- Harting, 2007). The first recorded use of the term “tutor” was at Oxford University in a document from Brasenose College, dated 1309, in which reference to students included the statement that “…the desires of their parents and the directions of their tutors” (Williams, 2007). Subsequently, the first recorded use of the term “tutorial,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in 1822 when Macaulay recorded in his Life and Letters the statement, “I begin my tutorial labours to-morrow.” The fact that during the past few years the discussion of the meaning and merits of the tutorial system has re-emerged within university circles has led to a re-examination of the tutorial philosophy and its central role in higher education (Bailey, 1965).. Though the tutorial model of education was developed in Oxford and Cambridge centuries ago, it was Professor Benjamin Jowett of Balliol College (and subsequently Vice- Chancellor of Oxford University) who put in place this method of education as the standard bearer of English learning and teaching (Beadsley, 1963). It was upon the dialectic of the student in discussion-based tutorials which constituted the uniqueness of an Oxford education for, it has been argued, this method fosters dialogue, argumentation, and independent thought elicited in one-on-one interactive engagement between the student as learner and the tutor as teaching scholar (Trigwell and Ashwin, 2003). The Oxford tutorial has been said by many, including most recently by David Palfreyman of New College, Oxford, “to have an almost mystic, cult status,” and though many of the younger dons of Cambridge and Oxford have sought to hide from the weekly twelve-hour tutorial schedule to which tradition has faithfully adhered. However, the tutorial by any standard is still considered “a pedagogical gem, the jewel in Oxford’s crown” (Palfreyman, p. 21). Oxford has never been, of course, without its lectures, its classroom presentations, its open forums for discussion between students and faculty in groups large and small. But still and all, the beauty of the tutorial is that it “prevents (the student) from following false and valueless trails…” being guided, prodded, challenged, and admonished by the tutor. The North Report of 1997 argued persuasively that “…the tutorial system encourages the student to take an active rather than a passive role in learning and develops skills in self-directed study and working independently … and provides a mechanism for the discussion of particular topics in considerable details one-on-one with a tutorial master in the field” (North Report of 1997, pp. 163-64). The Royal Commission of 1922 argued enthusiastically in favor of the Oxbridge tutorial method of education, i.e., Oxford and Cambridge, defending the accusation that this method was too expensive for the government to maintain by contending that the student “gets more teaching in return for his money,” based on the presumption that one-on-one engagement between tutor and student elevated the quality of the time spent in interaction (Royal Commission of 1922, pp. 38-39). A Fellow and Tutor of St. John’s College, Oxford, Dr. Will G. Moore, has spoken extensively about the virtues of tutorial education, emphasizing its simplicity and its administrative practicality. “At its most simple,” Moore explains, “the tutorial is a weekly meeting of the student with the teacher.” The process is quite basic. For the term’s eight weeks, the student and tutor have agreed upon a block of literature to be worked through together. The student comes once a week to the tutor’s digs, a comfortable room or rooms with soft chairs, old carpet, usually a fireplace, and, at least in an earlier day, a pipe or two between them and a glass of sherry or port. The student reads a paper covering about a half to three-quarters of an hour, being intermittently interrupted with the tutor’s questions, observations, suggestions, and clarifications. The tutorial was never imagined to replace other learning methods such as the classic address in the lecture hall, now disparagingly and all too often correctly called “the talking head.” The tutorial assumes these but the tutorial itself is existential, not designed for the tutor to “teach” content of any kind as that has been covered in the mutually agreed-upon readings, but rather an educational “event” wherein the student presents a formally prepared paper to which the scholar/tutor engages in discussion and constructive criticism (Moore, pp. 15- 18). Moore concludes his apologia for the classical tutorial by suggesting that the “root of the tutorial method is skeptical, a method that inquires, probes, scrutinizes. It is not at its best an ex cathedra authoritative statement, but in criticism, theory, analysis, and comparison.” In the final analysis, he suggests that the tutorial model “prefers the relative to the absolute, the tentative to the dogmatic, the essay to the treatise.” Lending further evidence for the efficacy of the tutorial and coming to its defense with might and main is Dr. Marjorie Reeves, Vice-Principal of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, in testimony before the Franks Commission of 1966. “When every effort has been made to make instruction effective, it is still true that there is no substitute for the individual tutorial.” She is quite clear about this, based both on her own teaching and that of Vice-Principal of one of Oxford University’s leading women’s colleges. The tutorial’s function, she continued before the Commission, “is not to instruct; it is to set the student the task of expressing his thought articulately, and then to assist him in subjecting his creation to critical examination and reconstructing it.” All teaching methods – lectures, group discussions, independent study – should ultimately have this as the goal. “This,” she continued in her testimonial argument, “is the process of handling material for oneself and of bringing together one’s own analysis, reflection, judgment in a form which is really a creation of individual thought.” In a typical tutorial arrangement, the student prepares such a document once each week for eight straight weeks. This formalization of one’s own ideas, thoughts, insights, challenges the student to be the best he can be for he is to present the material personally and singularly to the master tutor. “No one,” Dr. Reeves proclaims, “will dispute that this is the crown of the education process” (Franks Commission of 1966, pp. 65-66). As we well know, neither Oxford nor Cambridge have ever suggested that the tutorial model has not been altered with time and circumstances (Shale, 2000). The model itself is conducive to innovation, variation, and re-modeling. “The flexibility of the tutorial system,” Tapper and Palfreyman have suggested, “has enabled it to survive: it has been continuously redefined to meet changing conditions and new demands, and, in some form or other, it will persist into the twenty-first century” (Tapper and Palfreyman, p. 122). This will be explored later when we deal with the 21st century and the internet. For now, let it suffice to say that the weekly tutorial is, as Palfreyman has said in his now acclaimed classic, The Oxford Tutorial (2008), “…there is no place for the ill-prepared student to hide in a one-on-one tutorial…” (Palfreyman, p. 35). Whereas in the lecture hall or large classroom, the shy student, the unprepared student, the student seeking to avoid attention, may very well succeed in his deficiencies not being discovered, not so with the tutorial model. “This,” he continues, “is the Oxford tutorial as a pedagogical process … a process that develops critical-thinking, reflective- learning, or deep-learning is a concept equally applicable to any degree subject or academic discipline” (Palfreyman, p. 40). Few contemporary Oxford dons have been as outspokenly in favor of the tutorial than has Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of New College, Oxford.